I would like to announce that the 80 kbps test of upcoming Nero AAC encoder has just started. The purpose of this test is to determine if PNS (Perceptual Noise Substitution) or IS (Intensity Stereo) gives any advantage when used at 80 kbps. With this test, I wish to include true audiophile and scientific community into making the LC-AAC solutions even better in the future. Many thanks in advance for your help! Test runs for 18 days, until January 8th 2007.

1. Download http://s4.quicksharing.com/v/5647513/ABC_HR.ZIP.html2. Extract ABC_HR.ZIP in folder of your choice3. Read Readme.txt from ABC_HR.ZIP4. Download samples for the test (links are in ABC_HR.ZIP and in next post), and extract them in the directory where ABC_HR.zip was extracted 5. When you download and extract all the samples, execute the decode_all.bat files from bin folder. This will decode all the files and prepare the test 6. Now everything is ready for the test7. Open ABC/HR by executing abchr.jar - and, to test each sample, open up the individual .ecf files. Each test set (Sample1, Sample2,…) has an .ecf file for each sample 8. From now on, typical ABC/HR methodology applies, you need to judge the quality of individual files - save the results after you're done, and send the files to me, either by PP or directly to: mbakker (at) nero.com (replace at with @ to get an e-mail address)

Links to samples coming in the next post...

Happy Testing

Here are the samples for the test. Samples from previous Mares and Robertos test at 48 kbps and 128 kbps were chosen. Test with lowest scores on those tests were chosen. This is because even at 48 kbps for many people it was hard to distinguish encoded samples from the original. Also most genres of music are present.